Plastics, coatings and finishes
The surfaces that fail invisibly and days late, because the damage is chemistry rather than a mark.
What this area turns on
A regulator's fact sheet lists acetone as a solvent for plastics and, three lines later, warns that acetone attacks plastics — the cleaning use and the damage are the same property applied to something the reader did not mean to dissolve. Worse, the failure is delayed: environmental stress cracking appears at moulded corners hours after the wipe, by which time nobody connects the two. Add static, which a lighting manufacturer says makes a dry cloth on plastic worse than no cloth at all.
Assessed and found wanting
Widely repeated techniques in this area that the evidence does not support, or supports only in part.
Cream cleaners ruin uPVC
DisputedThe profile manufacturer permits a non-abrasive cream cleaner for stains soapy water will not shift. Sparingly - excess dulls the gloss - and never on woodgrain foils.
Sticky plastic just needs cleaning
Does not workThe commonest cleaning problem that is not a cleaning problem. The tackiness is the plastic's own additive surfacing, and cleaning removes only what has already arrived.
The records
Household plastics
Material or surfaceThe catch-all for the polymer surfaces in every room. Solvents do not clean them, they dissolve them — and the same word covers a dozen different polymers.
Natural rubber
Material or surfaceThe material appliance seals, mats and gloves are made of, and it is attacked from both ends of the chemistry — by solvents and by caustics alike.
Silicone sealant
Material or surfaceThe flexible bead round a bath or a worktop, and the most common place a household meets mould it cannot remove — because the growth is inside the material.
uPVC
Material or surfaceThe commonest window frame in the UK and the material with the most confident wrong advice attached to it. The manufacturer permits a cream cleaner — sparingly, and not on woodgrain.
Laminate worktop
Material or surfaceA printed decorative layer over a chipboard core. The surface is tough and the edge is not, and almost every failure starts at a joint.
Lacquered metal
Material or surfaceBrass, copper or steel under a clear film applied to stop it tarnishing. Every metal polish sold for the metal underneath attacks the film instead.
Powder-coated aluminium
Material or surfaceA baked organic coating over metal. Strong solvents and abrasives attack the coating, and the rule of thumb for what is mild enough is unusually memorable.
Anodised aluminium
Material or surfaceAn oxide layer grown into the metal rather than laid on it. A standards body names five specific chemicals that must never touch it, and the damage is permanent.
Vehicle clear coat
Material or surfaceA transparent film a fraction of a millimetre thick doing all the work. Everything that looks like a stain on car paint is usually an etch in this layer.
Solvent crazing
ScienceA network of fine cracks that appears in plastic days after a solvent touched it. The surface looked fine at the time, which is what makes it dangerous.
Solvents and polymers
ScienceA solvent cannot tell a soil from a surface made of similar stuff. Most modern surfaces are polymers, which is what makes this the commonest way to ruin one.
Static and dust
ScienceA dry cloth on a plastic surface charges it, and a charged surface pulls dust straight back. Wiping can leave a surface dustier than before.
Acetone
Cleaning agentThe solvent in nail polish remover. The same fact sheet that lists it as a solvent for plastics also warns, in three words, that it attacks them.
White spirit
Cleaning agentThe petroleum solvent the leather and carpet trades name for oil marks. One substance under three names, and it attacks plastic, rubber and coatings.